Kids Go to the Woods…Kids Get Dead.
Reviewed by Brian Kirst
Perhaps one of the best no-budget flicks in terms of intent, production and performances, writer/director Michael Hall’s Kids Go to the Woods…Kids Get Dead also relives the delirious days of Rhonda Shear’s Up All Night on the USA network and the delirious flicks shown in her heyday such as Sorority Girls and the Creature from Hell.
The prime joke of the film, obviously, is its title which pretty much sums up the plot – on her birthday weekend; a teenage girl accompanies her friends to a cabin in the woods where primetime slaughtering is soon the name of the game. Hall takes this gambit one further, though, by having the primary male protagonist read a book that not only shares the film’s title but also one that, plot wise, echoes the movie’s events perfectly – and he also places the film on a late night cable show (with commercial and commentary breaks), hosted by the vivacious and comical Candy Adams, played with sassy resolve and sweetness by the delightful Carly Goodspeed.
Meanwhile, Hall plays up all the clichés of low budget slacker flicks, as well, by hiring obviously overage actors to play his teens (because of this, two of the quirkiest moments occur when the virginal sister-brother leads have to call home when they reach their destination to inform their parents of their safe arrival and when they freak out when they are informed that their friend’s uncle will not be supervising them because it will upset their mother), going overboard with his foreboding oldster’s involvement and by playing up the drugging and sex equals death attitudes made so famous by films such as Friday the 13th and Halloween. While, Hall’s gas mask sporting killer is similar in look to My Bloody Valentine’s prime villain, actor Joseph Campellane makes his movements and presence plenty spooky and despite the occasional energy lags, Kids Go in the Woods never reaches the nerve grating badness of many of its contemporaries in independent horrordom.
While all the performances are miraculously competent (if not exceptional), special mention should be truly given to Leah Rudick as Casey, Andrew Waffenschmidt as Scott and Eric Carpenter, as Derrick, the obnoxious jock who spends the movie consistently trying to get into Casey’s pants.
